User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0 Build ID: 20110814092938 Steps to reproduce: Firefox 6 has domain highlighting in the location bar (bug 451833) and Firefox 7 trims the protocol off the URL (bug 665580). Expected results: We should add 2 checkboxes to Firefox's preferences window to control these prefs (browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled and browser.urlbar.trimURLs, respectively). They would look good under the "Privacy" or "Security" panels (or maybe somewhere else...I'll leave this to more experienced people). We could just label them "Enable domain highlighting in location bar" and "Hide common protocols in the location bar" or something like that.

My first Bugzilla patch (actually, my first time using hg) - I added 2 checkboxes in the "Advanced" pane in the preferences window to control the prefs mentioned in my original description

Also, I made the patch with the latest source from mozilla-central, but if this bug could be fixed for Firefox 7 or 8 that might be better (this is my first time doing anything like this)

It'd also make sense to have an option to hightlight the *complete* domain. Apart from (maybe) the "www." prefix, there's no way to make a reliable assumption about what parts of the URL are meaningless: "forums.example.com" and "extranet.example.com" are possibly entirely different sites, not to mention "aerojarre.blogspot.com" and "googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com". But I suppose it's not as easy since it possibly needs to be implemented first :-?

The only problem with that would be something like secure.ebay.com.junk.badsite.com, where the "secure.ebay.com" would also be highlighted (they talked about this a lot in bug 451833).

Comment on attachment 554661 [details] [diff] [review] Added 2 checkboxes in the prefs window ("Advanced" pane) normally I would make the argument of code complexity, but if the pref already exists the only remaining argument is that our preferences dialog is getting really full. Can we collapse these two options into a single check box, called "Format the Location bar"

This patch puts the checkboxes in the Security pane instead. I'm not sure if they really "belong" here (I guess domain highlighting fits "Security" more than protocol trimming), but there was a lot more room (especially compared to the "Advanced" pane). @faaborg - That might work better, but I'll admit that I don't really know how to do that "correctly" - someone more experienced would have to do that.

(In reply to Jake Hartz from comment #6) > Created attachment 555015 [details] [diff] [review] > Moved checkboxes to security pane > > This patch puts the checkboxes in the Security pane instead. I'm not sure if > they really "belong" here (I guess domain highlighting fits "Security" more > than protocol trimming), but there was a lot more room (especially compared > to the "Advanced" pane). Faaborg said he wanted only one checkbox controlling both prefs.

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #7) > Faaborg said he wanted only one checkbox controlling both prefs. Yeah - as I mentioned, I probably wouldn't be the greatest person to do that correctly - somebody with more experience would have to work that out (unless I could do something like have the checkbox control one of the prefs and use onsynctopref on the checkbox or onchange on the preference element to also update the other pref - but this seems a bit clunky). Also, with only one checkbox it wouldn't really "belong" under the Security pane - it would fit better under the Advanced pane.

having spoken with Gavin and Limi and got their agreement, I think this should be resolved wontfix.

Why - is it just a lack of support for the bug?

This just isn't something that we feel needs to be exposed to our entire user base. You can of course flip the prefs manually, or use an addon that exposes them conveniently.

(In reply to Gavin Sharp (use gavin@gavinsharp.com for email) from comment #13) > This just isn't something that we feel needs to be exposed to our entire > user base. If it seems like users are getting more ignorant with time, perhaps we should examine our role in making them that way. The more we hide from users, the less proficient they are which then justifies the next round of making things "simpler." Rinse, lather, repeat.

Do we need a new area in Preferences for UI tweaks such as this? Perhaps a checkbox list of options with a search box at the top to quickly find tweaks of interest. Or in this case, could we simply add a right-click menu option to the Location bar: [x] Show http:// prefix

(In reply to John Hopkins (:jhopkins) from comment #18) > Do we need a new area in Preferences for UI tweaks such as this? We don't need an area in preferences for UI tweaks that are resolved wontfix.

Related bug report at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2427677 (copying the URL before a page has fully loaded, can leave out the protocol) and a related bug, requesting that the default be changed to false, at bug 691147 (previously marked duplicate, but not currently).